Fixed issue where pairing info was lost after loading a story properties page with pairing enabled and saving without making any changes.

More fine-tuning of the forum’s optional profanity filter.

Please note the word “pairing” can be misleading as it represents the strong association, which does not have to be romantic, between two or more characters as designated by the writer. For simplicity reasons we will continue to use this term until a better term can be found.

Filter and searching ability for pairing is coming in the next update.

232 responses to “Pairing Visibility”

Folks, PLEASE let me delete characters added in error!!! My story now has two extra characters listed who are NOT in the story! I did mention this before – why did you do a rollout without taking a look??

Thank you, however, I did, but when I Save, they return. They show in the summary when the story is displayed. I do not see them in the search results. Very weird.

seila

10/18/2013 at 10:35 pm

Patience? Xing’s post says right there “Due to caching issues, it may take up to 1 hour for all pages to reflect the change.”

yemi hikari

10/18/2013 at 10:35 pm

Because it takes time for the changes to show?

bienfait

10/18/2013 at 10:49 pm

@ShahbanouScheherazade – I had that happen when I was trying to correct the order my story’s characters appeared in – somehow two of them had got reversed which wasn’t what I wanted. I deleted the ones that were wrong, but one of them refused to be deleted until I removed all four characters and re-listed them (one at a time, saving in between each one) in the order I wanted them to appear.

I think there is definitely some kind of weirdness going on. Maybe if you try what I did, it will work. I hope so, anyway.

Relationship is much too vague. Ship is even worse, and is only used in certain fandoms.
Love items?
Romantic affiliation? Eh . . . too stiff.
Coupling has the same problem as pairing.
Sweethearts? Lol. Someone else pitch in, please.

Partners. . . Hmm, I tend to associate partners with the old west terminology, although lately I’ve mostly heard it used to imply dating or marriage between same genders. So that might give the wrong connotation perhaps, varying from person to person? It’s a pretty broad term.

Romantic pairs is certainly more specific.

Part of the trouble is what the feature and its labeling will mean. :/ Xing’s idea of “strong association” . . . Hmm. I have a feeling that very word is his initial reasoning behind the thankfully discarded idea to pair up all instances of only two characters.

So maybe the bigger question is who will use this feature and how will it be used? And then from there a more suitable name can be derived.

No, ship is the best option. As for only being used in certain fandoms, I’ve never been a part of a fandom that did not almost instinctively know what was meant by the word ‘ship’ when referring to two or more characters. Considering how many fandoms I actively follow, that’s saying quite a bit. Shipping is such a wide-spread thing in virtually every fandom that I find it difficult to believe people would have trouble understanding what was being implied.

Relationship is vague, but when someone ships two characters, it’s always romance.

“Ship” is a horribly lazy term, and creates a false impression for those not familiar with the lingua franca of the fanfic community. For a long time after I first encountered it, I wondered why so many stories were written about characters going to sea.

As for “shipping” as the retroformation verb, that gives the impression that they’re doing so in a cargo container. Which in some cases would be a very good thing.

konarciq

10/21/2013 at 11:25 am

LOL Me too!

seila

10/21/2013 at 5:32 pm

Simoneau said it all, and quite cleverly at that.

ShahbanouScheherazade

10/18/2013 at 10:44 pm

To clarify: when I would save my changes on the Properties page under Manage Stories, the two characters I had deleted would show up again. In addition, they are visible in the summary displayed at the top of the story (the page a reader sees). I acknowledge what you say about patience, but I also know that when new code is rolled out, the only bugs that can be fixed are the ones the programmers know/hear about. The fact that the Properties page didn’t reflect the deletion doesn’t seem like a server propagation issue particularly. Hopefully all will be well soon.

@Xing — Looks good on the Properties page now. I still see my little extra guys on the story’s page in the summary above the actual story, but perhaps this is a caching issue? Very responsive, guys — nice recovery!! Didn’t mean to rag on you — I appreciate and am impressed by the job you do!

I don’t understand what is meant by “strong association” if not romantic. Because when I choose characters to list, I pick the ones that have the most focus. A pairing really implies romance; otherwise, it’s friendship/family/enemies, etc and no need for special marking with slash or brackets.

Just want to mention that as a VoiceOver user in Mac Safari, cannot work out how to use the pairing system. There is no indication that VoiceOver recognizes which characters are paired together or if anything happens when I click Pairing A or No Pairing. Buttons need tooltips, or what VO calls “help tags,” explaining what the button does, and maybe some sort of instructions for my benefit on how exactly to set up a pairing between multiple characters.

Also agreed that it would be a mistake to interpret the term “pairing”–or the usage of this new filter–too broadly. I’m fairly picky about correct language myself; but especially on the internet, there are sometimes extremely important differences between the literal meaning of a word, and the common usage of it.

“Pairing” in the context of fanfiction is pretty much universally understood as meaning a romantic couple. Moreover, that is precisely the type of relationship people want to distinguish with the filter. Therefore, I believe both the word and the filter should be used here in that sense. And most *definitely*, for the happiness of all readers, no other type of relationship should be designated in the same way that romantic pairings are.

Think of it like this. If you had people marking enemy relationships as a “pairing” just because it’s a “strong association”, you would have yourself another royal uproar–both from shippers who would be upset to find stories marked as “pairings” in which their OTP actually hates each other, and non-shippers who wouldn’t know whether a “pairing” story actually meant romance or something else.

Otherwise, I think the changes are good ones overall.

(Now I hope some of the good judgment being returned to in this matter will be brought to the copy-paste issue as well.)

…And on rereading the post, now I think Xing does mean the pairing filter *is* meant for romantic couples, but he’s concerned about users taking the word “pairing” in its more literal broader sense–which is why he wants to find a different word.

Personally, I still think “pairing” will work fine, because of its commonly accepted usage.

(I’m trying to make sense. It’s past 2am where I am.)

yemi hikari

10/19/2013 at 3:02 am

I agree with you that pairing would work fine. Those using the word pairing outside of romance is rare.

seila

10/18/2013 at 10:57 pm

Ah, glad it’s fixed then.

And speaking of fixes, all the characters are now visible in their proper format inside the story now! Nice. Still wonky on the author page, though. I like the brackets.

I’m going to make a suggestion here. I love the brackets as it clearly defines pairings when there is one. Looking at some of the stories though I’m going to say the comma right after the bracket looks strange.

Getting the impression it is a separate filter. It had better be, anyway, due to the current way in which filtering two or three characters results in every story with those characters shown. Presumably, the pairing search could be toggled on/off with a check box or something.

I’ve been thinking that…and I sincerely hope not…but one thing’s for sure…if I can’t at least have an explanation as to why this is happening, I will be making AO3 my main place to be…and it sucks if that will need to be the case, but unfortunately if something isn’t done about this so that I can use my programs, I really won’t have any other choices…

Before i lose faith, I really would just like it if Xing would make proper statements on why he’s doing this.

I agree this copy and paste has never been a big problem before they made it one. Yes people asked for it which is why it can be an optional feature with the default as off. If someone cares they will turn it on. There are so many ways around it and it is preventing so many programs that people need to read. I know that people are worried about plagiarizing but this is not stopping it all it does is hurt people who are using the site that have learning or physical disabilities, people with out constant internet access, and people who travel a lot. People that are copy or using programs for these reason are not hurting anyone yet there the ones that are hurting because of this not those stealing others work. Printing or copy things from the internet as long as you do not claim it as your own and/ or distribute others work dose not hurt anybody. Most copyright and plagiarism laws are worried about the distribution and/ or claiming of another persons work which is wrong and illegal. This is not stopping that just hurting people have a legitimate reason to copy/ or use a reading program.

And if someone is so terribly paranoid of their stories getting copied and plagiarized, they shouldn’t be publishing them on the internet…

Or save them for publishing them officially (for money) themselves.

yemi hikari

10/21/2013 at 1:40 pm

Bingo on the not publishing to the net. However, I think that may go over some peoples heads just like the fact some things are too personal to post goes over some peoples heads. They publish because they can without thinking things through thoroughly.

konarciq

10/21/2013 at 2:00 pm

Going over their heads or not, it doesn’t stop it from being their own responsibility. Maybe it’s simply a life lesson to be learned then. Right along with, “if you walk into a wall, you’ll get a temporary bump on your head.”

yemi hikari

10/22/2013 at 5:29 pm

I agree with you. Thing is many don’t realize that you need to be careful what you publish and go to blame others and try forcing sites to take precautions. For example, nocopy for the ones fearing plagiarism but for those who are but hurt that their self-insert that is them got torn apart and thus they take it as personal insult want to be able to delete signed reviews. I think the site admins need to learn not to cater to certain people.

RK

10/19/2013 at 12:20 am

I don’t know if I’ll ever use it on my own stories, but personally I’m happy with the pairing system. I had my doubts at first, since I was afraid it was going to add extra clutter, but everything is nice and neat with the brackets. I like it! Also, this will make it much easier to avoid slash stories.

I do wish we could see all four characters listed on an author’s profile, though. I suppose this is coming next? Thanks for all your hard work!

If you mean a filter that designates stories as gen/het/slash/etc., and lets users choose not to view one or more of those categories altogether–then I highly agree. Personally, that would be pretty much the best thing FFN could do to improve my browsing experience.

(Aside from, you know, not trying to hinder me from copying stories to read elsewhere offline.)

That would be good but only if it’s possible to choose more than one category, since a story can contain both het and slash, for example.
(On the other hand, I’m starting to think everyone is starting to as FF to have the same options as on AO3 and I’m not sure if I like that…)

yemi hikari

10/19/2013 at 1:22 pm

I don’t think giving the members of the site the “options” they have is why A03 has the problems it does, it’s “how” they implemented them. Any writer on A03 can put in any tag they want with no restrictions. I’ve seen stories where the writer actually tagged their stories with the names of their OCs despite the fact no one is going to be looking for their OC. When the features get added to this site their restricted to what the site admins add in, though it can take time for them to add in characters.

Since the last time, I reserved judgement on the whole and waited patiently for the rest of updates on the issue. I tried it out:

– I like the easier viewing and picking and multiple pair option.

– Very happy to see there’s actual visibility in regards to pairings and all characters being shown (will be even happier once those pairings/characters are shown on all the pages, but understand the caching issue so will continue to wait on that).

-The comma kind of looks odd (agree with Yemi), so would prefer maybe a different symbol to separate characters. It would be easier on the eyes and makes the listing look less cluttered and close together. I even prefer the dot thing.

-The term “Pairing” should be fine. It’s most well known as in the romantic association and the prior arguments about the issue of pairings in stories being listed have commonly been using that term.

-Looking forward to when searching for pairings will be a viable option.

-This new format makes it less irritating (for me) for the characters to not be listed in the order I put them in, and the no character order fits more this way (at least to me).

-I really do like the brackets. It makes everything so nice and neat and easily separated.

-Also like how faster the updates seem to be coming.

Overall, a more positive review of the new system. Happy and satisfied for the most part so far, so good job and keep working hard. For the nocopy, a reply really would be nice -even a one-sentence, snarky reply ;)

Characters still don’t list properly on my profile page or management pages. This is disappointing, since it’s an unnecessary extra step to look for my fics with pairings just to check that they are delineated properly. It doesn’t make sense to me that it can work for the directory but not the admin pages. But hopefully, I won’t have to tweak it yet again in the future, so I guess I can live with the minor inconvenience.

One small question, related but not technical. Do you folks think pairings are only legitimate when the characters are officially committed in the fic, or does it count as a pairing if they are merely attracted to each other but have not yet formalized anything? It could go either way, but I’m wondering about impressions when people see that characters are paired. Would it be misleading to mark them if there’s no actual “‘ship” but there are definite cues to it happening in the future? Even without overt physical actions like making out? Instinctively, I think flagging the characters is fine if they are in the “pre-romance” stages, since it tells readers how to view their interactions. But if people are expecting actual steaminess because of the pairing, might be better to leave them separate.

In my opinion, the pairing feature should be used if there are any hints of romantic relations, flirting or simple UST between two main characters in the story. In my preferred fandom lots of people use header info (including me) and pairings are always listed in them, sometimes just the names of the characters/their ship, names+UST, names+RST or names+established. That way it’s clear that the pairing is established from the get-go, there will only be unresolved sexual tension, just the resolving of sexual tension (not necessarily a relationship) will follow, or a relationship might possibly be formed/ended throughout the story,etc.

Anyway, considering readers either like to read about ship or not, it would be best, in my opinion, to list the pairing if there is anything in the story to even hint at something (of a sexual/romantic nature) between the characters.

Glad my gut feeling was right. I read both romance and friendship, but if I see a pairing listed, I expect there to be flirting at least. :)

yemi hikari

10/20/2013 at 3:09 pm

Back when we were only able to have two characters to choose from and I labeled the story with Character A and Character B and labeled the story with the genre Family and Humor I had some people go off because I hinted at a pairing between Character A and Character C. The story was actually about Character A and Character B as siblings and Character B jumping to conclusions about Character A crushing on Character C.

I also have a story between Character A and Character B which involves Character B discussing whether or not her brother has a crush on Character C that they also got upset with that one despite yet again not being labeled romance. I can’t though label the pairing between Character A and Character C because Character C doesn’t even show up which is one of the downsides to the pairing system.

So yes. I think not marking a pairing that plays an important role is misleading.

I would also like a pink unicorn pony that poops multi-colored marshmallows. They do occasionally respond to emailed and blog complaints and every now and then, make a real effort at abuse reports, but their response is not what you could call efficient.

It is nice to see that the team is still fine-tuning the profanity filter, but please can we have the following words unblocked:
– tongue
– blow
– and any very minor words that were blocked but are no swear words.

What is so bad in them? That people can use the tongue for example for stuff that isnt appropriate to mention at places, doesnt mean you have to block it. Why didnt they block hand as well, or mouth? ._.
Seriously….
Once someone swore on my forum and I warned them with ‘Watch the tongue!’ Now it looks like I swore as well with it being starred out…

As a forum admin, I say the filter still needs work and I dont recommend for anyone to use it on their forum. I myself tried it out, saw what it did, and quickly disabled it.

I also see no problem in very mild words being displayed. ‘Crap’ for example is more funny than swearing, and one says daily that they feel like crap or their story is crappy. That is not a swear word either.

The filter would be ‘basic as you call it once only the major swear words are blocked. I would like to see a profanity filter in maybe three degrees:
1. Basic – only blocks major swearwords.
2. Medium – Blocks major and mild swear words
3. Strict – blocks every little swear and malicious word

Why? because this way we can choose according to the forum type. Some are more mature, some are for kids, some just want to block the very major swear words.

Without being rude, I don’t think a levelled profanity filter will work in practice.

A) There aren’t really any forums, or very many archives on this site for kids. It’s more than likely kids visit the site, but I would guess that the target demographic is teenagers/ young adults who are well aware of what swear words are.

B) The filter doesn’t actually remove inappropriate words, it just censores them and oftentimes it’s fairly easy to guess what the user has typed.

A better solution would be to give an author or admin the power to remove an inappropriate forum post or an inappropriate review. Of course, once you give a person power there’s always a danger of the person abusing it in some way.

But it censors stuff it shouldnt. What is wrong with tongue, or blow or many other words that you use every day and need in a forum post which doesnt contain any swear words. That you can use some words in an inappropriate way doesnt need that the word itself is inappropriate as well.

And I think it might work. Just look at the forums. This would give more options for the admins. I for one would like a basic filter where only the major swearwords are blocked, because my forum members are all adult, mature people and I dont need any little mild swearword blocked. I think the majority of the forums are like that actually. Then there are those who like to keep a strict appropriate posts, so they would probably want to block most swear words. Gives us more options.

The way it is now, I wouldnt recommend it to anyone. At least not to the majority. it doesnt suit the needs of any forums, since it blocks any possible words that can be used as inappropriate in certain situation. I wonder when mouth and hand will be blocked after ‘tongue’. Because right now my forum looks like every second word is a swear word while it isnt the case in truth.

yemi hikari

10/19/2013 at 1:10 pm

You have to be thirteen to have an account here so I personally turn on the filter on my forums because I expect these kids to be coming into the forums.

are all my ‘old’ stories still slated to be auto-paired when they have just two characters listed? at some future update? and how old is ‘old’? like everything published on the site before today (or when that update is)?

just don’t want to go in and reset the pairings just to have to edit all my stories all over again in a few days or so… ;)

well, a couple ‘pairing’ blog posts back, it was ‘when all these updates are done, all the old fics with only 2 characters listed will be automatically set to pairing mode.’ i haven’t seen a redaction of this yet.

so, the question remains… is it still slated? i guess we will find out, if and when they do it…

If they do reset my fics, I will not be happy. I already had to fix them twice. They had better just leave fics alone when they put the pairing filter live. Incredibly condescending to assume everyone is a romance nut. I think we as readers are smart enough to figure out a pair should have been marked as such for legacy stories that have not been updated to use the new features.

Lynn Marie

10/19/2013 at 10:38 am

For the next update, maybe you could make it so when you click on a fanfiction that you’ve already read, it goes to the chapter you were previously on.

I’ve said it before (when the feature was first mentioned) and I’ll say it again: it should not be called a pairing mode when it can be applied to more than two people. “Relationship” is far better suited and doesn’t indicate a set number of people involved. Regardless of the name it shouldn’t be applied to anything other than (romantic) relationships, because that kinda defeats the purpose of the feature since you already have 2, 3 or 4 characters listed that all play a major part in the story and more than likely are somehow involved (friends, siblings, parents, enemies, frenemies, etc). Like someone else mentioned, people won’t be able to tell them apart from the ‘regular’ listed characters if you apply it to whatever kind of relationship/bond there is between the characters and there’s already a family and friendship genre.

If you do want to emphasize the romantic nature of the feature then I would suggest renaming it ‘Romantic Relationship mode” and, since we seem to live in a world that loves mashed names and/or abbreviations, it could be referred to as the RoRe mode in short. That way it’s made clear the bracketed characters are somehow romantically involved and the feature’s definition doesn’t limit the number of characters to two, three or four.

I was pleased that the pairing was immediately visible in-story after updating all of my romantic stories and seeing the other 1/2 listed characters there as well. I don’t know if you intended this to work like this and that’s why you held off on displaying all 3/4 listed characters in-story, but I’m gonna assume that problem is now fixed (unless someone can tell me all slots aren’t visible unless you make two of them a pair).

However, the character listings are still way off on the author’s profile. They only display two characters in alphabetic order (in my fandom at least) and don’t show the paired characters, which gives the false impression the two visible ones are in a romantic relationship for romance stories. So, it would be nice if you guys could fix this.

I don’t know whether the pairings are visible in the story overview because my stories are all complete (except for one on hiatus) but so far there aren’t any listed pairings on the first page of complete or in-progress stories in my fandom. That means either the pairing feature is only visible in-story (and presumably in alerts) or no one has noticed this new feature yet because its only mentioned on FFnet’s homepage, blog and twitter. At first I was going to suggest adding a small banner of sorts at the top of the page in the account area to let all members know they could now pair characters in a romantic relationship, but then I realized it would be better to do this on the entire website, or at least in the story overviews and account areas. That way, both authors and readers become aware of this possibility and what the bracketed characters mean.

Something I forgot to mention in my post above was that when it becomes clear the pairing mode is for romantic purposes only, it will also eliminate the need for the romance genre in stories that feature a lot of adventure, angst, hurt/comfort, mystery, crime, supernatural etc. By using bracketed characters everyone will (eventually) know these two characters are in a romantic relationship in this particular story without needing to see the romance genre, thereby allowing authors to choose another (additional) genre for their story. Of course, this doesn’t mean the romance genre becomes obsolete since there are lots of stories that are romances about the development/start of a relationship or a “will they, won’t they get together” after lots of obstacles.

Oh, and on another note I would like to request you change the “OC” tag to “Original Character” or “Original Character (OC)”, because it just looks silly to have a lot of characters with their first name and initial of last name or vice versa and one “OC”. Not to mention that people already requested this when it was first introduced in all fandoms simply because there are people who don’t know what “OC” stands for. And if you are working in the character area, it would also be appreciated if you could maybe be consistent in the way you list them: either use an initial and surname or a first name and initial for last name for everyone, rather than mix it all up.

I think it has to do with the fact people don’t know it’s available. I mean, you kind of have to mess around to realize it is there. It is showing up… I happen to have narrowed down the searches for some of the stories I’ve written. But yeah… most people don’t even realize it exists, or some people are leery about using it.

(OC) Original Character would be better because then it wouldn’t be mixed in with the canon character names.

fems

10/19/2013 at 4:44 pm

Yeah, I browsed all the way back to my story (which has pairing) and saw that the pairing is correctly being displayed. Guess other authors simply haven’t seen the update yet, which is why I think a banner atop the story/account pages would be best to announce any major update/changes, even if it’s just one line mentioning the update, subject and link to the blog. That way everyone can see it when they visit FFnet and implement it if they want to.

As for the OC thing: that might put it atop the list but it isn’t the correct way to list it, since you always have to write a word in full before mentioning the abbreviation in parentheses.

ShahbanouScheherazade

10/19/2013 at 12:23 pm

I would like to propose a feature (um-hmm, like your lists are not long enough…), and thought I might as well mention it here. I would love a checkbox I could use to indicate when a review has “spoilers” so that prospective readers could choose whether or not they wished to know all the plot twists. I don’t want to remove the review or anything like that, I would just like people to know it has a spoiler or two (this just happened to me – a lovely review that added “and how amazing that [spoiler]”.

They could probably incorporate a simple “[spoiler] [/spoiler]”-button/code for the reviews (and perhaps the forums, I never go there so don’t know whether this already exists) which would then display a spoiler button that can be clicked by those wishing to read said spoiler. I much prefer such spoiler buttons/boxes than darkened text one has to hover their cursor over to reveal it.

Most of my reviewers who mention specific spoilers simply add a line of “SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER” in case anyone else reads them but I know some people don’t. It doesn’t really bother me as a reader or writer (whether it comes to fanfiction or books, shows, movies etc) simply because I mostly look forward to seeing how something is written/revealed but I know there are plenty of people who would appreciate a feature like this. Probably more than the ones who like the no-copy thing.

I would personally appreciate it as it would make it easier to write reviews and go into detail without worrying about providing major spoilers that didn’t have to do with negative critiques. It’s why I think a lot of my reviews for the good, well written stuff end up short. I end up being brief.

seila

10/19/2013 at 4:54 pm

Something for spoilers would be nice. I approve of either idea.

I have a dear friend who won’t read or watch anything that he’s been spoiled on, and I’m sure there are other people using this site who are like that too.

I would also very much like to see something that helps people avoid spoilers in reviews. It’s been happening with my stories for years, and a couple of readers have told me it *has* negatively impacted their experiences.

In the review box, after the note, ‘Please type your review here’…,they could just add something like “Please begin with *SPOILER ALERT!* if your review will contain spoilers .”

If they were in a particularly wordy mood “Please type your review here. If your review will contain spoilers, out of consideration for other readers, please preface it with *SPOILER ALERT!*”

fems

10/20/2013 at 5:55 am

The problem with the spoiler still being visible underneath the warning line is that most people don’t read in straight lines and subconsciously already see/read/process some words in lines underneath the ones they are reading at the time… so they’ll most likely still pick up some/all words in the spoiler, even more so if the review happens to be at at the top of the page or something.

From a screen reader standpoint, having a button is the absolute best way to guarantee the hiding of spoilers. Provided people understand what spoilers are and are kind enough to use the tags if they were implemented. This is a great idea and really should come standard. I’ll still read or watch things I’ve been spoiled on because I still don’t know how something happened or the exact details of the plot, but depending on severity of the spoiler, it can really be a let-down. Better to err on the side of caution as far as spoilers go, IMO.

cathy massey

10/20/2013 at 7:22 pm

You’re right about the trouble with people looking past the immediate line.

I prefer to read only complete works, and now that we have the ‘complete’ notation in the summary, I find that many authors forget to use it anyway.

It took me a long time to train my eyes to see only the bottom line and spot the tbc or end/fini at the bottom of the last posting of a piece when I checked one out, without picking up any of the end paragraph.

I’m working this idea out as I enter, so please forgive anything that seems poorly phrased.
When you post an abuse report, it will not advance until you have selected an abuse type., and I’m very bad about forgetting, so it always trips me up. I think a spoiler button might function best sort of like that. Put two buttons ‘spoiler alert’ and ‘no spoilers’, and have to click one of them before it would post. The ‘no spoilers’ one would not have to be visible in your review.

It’s beginning to occur to me that as a reader, I think i’d welcome something like this when an author posts. Two buttons saying ‘complete’ and ‘tbc’, and the posting not finalized until one or the other is selected.

I’m strictly a lurking reader, and have never seen the pages from which the authors work. Authors, any opinions? Does this sound good to you? (If there’s one thing I’ve found out in the last couple of months here is that there’s always an opinion, and that many of them are better thought out and better phrased than mine!)

yemi hikari

10/21/2013 at 2:52 am

The way its set up is pretty much like a yes or no question. When you go to put up the last chapter you have to toggle it to complete before or after you post the last chapter.

fems

10/21/2013 at 3:24 am

@ cathy massey

For authors there’s the properties page for their story where you list the information (title, summary, genres, regular/crossover, language, fandom, characters and in-progress/complete) with tabs to content (to add/delete/replace chapters) and some other options. However, the problem with not changing the status has happened to me once or twice upon uploading the last chapter of my story, simply because after setting up the story you don’t really look at the properties tab anymore and go straight to content (if it’s a multi-chapter story) and then it’s easy to forget/overlook the status button. Fortunately, my reviewers are kind enough to point it out to me if I forgot to change the status (I use a ‘The End’ line at the end of every story).

The only thing I can think of to perhaps improve people’s use of the status ‘button’ for fics is if it was actually on the contents page (and be given a ‘hiatus’ option too), since that is where you have to actually add/delete/replace chapters and maybe make it a big one in the top center of the page or something.

Actually, Fems has a good point. Maybe the in-progress/complete status should be moved to the content page. As it is, it’s an extra step to switch tabs just to change the flag, and I think if people noticed the setting as they were editing content, it would indeed be remembered better. I’ve never forgotten to change the status, but I’m thorough that way.

But the problem is for people who post many one-shots. When you post a new fic, you need to provide the document of the first chapter. The Complete status can easily be selected from the same page. If that option got moved to the Content tab, the reverse issue would exist where one-shots are not marked as completed. And one-shots can be harder to determine as complete, versus chaptered fics.

seila

10/21/2013 at 5:44 pm

Why not have it in both places?

Asj

10/21/2013 at 9:57 pm

…why are people reading the reviews before the chapters? Every review should have spoilers. How can you comment on what you like in a chapter without saying what happened in the chapter? Readers should know that.

cmcwiki

10/22/2013 at 12:18 am

THANKYOU! people complaining about spoilers in fic reviews are like people complaining their icecream is too cold

yemi hikari

10/21/2013 at 11:57 pm

There are people who use reviews to help gauge whether or not to read a fic. Spoilers can be avoided, but they can also be hard to avoid particularly if you critique.

seila

10/22/2013 at 1:19 am

Actually I read the reviews along with the story. XD After every chapter I’ve read, I go spy on what other people had to say about it.

And sometimes I’ll look at reviews before reading a story to guess at what’s inside. Other times I’ll look at reviews for a fic that I stopped reading because I didn’t like the direction the story was taking, but thought the ideas were cool. In this second case it’s more of a wondering where the story is now, and if other people were similarly bothered.

I really don’t care much about spoilers personally. It’s about how it happens, not necessarily the what. That and I like to busy my mind with various what-if thoughts. I’m an extremely slow reader actually because of this; I spend a very large chunk of my reading time daydreaming.

Haha. I’m the type of person who usually reads the ending of the book before reading rest of the story, so I wouldn’t mind being spoiled, at all. But it does sound nice to have that option for those who do mind and like reading the reviews before the actual story.

Could you please, please, PLEASE take off the google translation thing? It keeps reappearing whenever I change a page (like going to a new chapter) even though I disabled it on the previous page. It is seriously annoying.

If we want google in our browsing, we can use the multitude of options that google already grants us (like Chrome). But it’s something that should be strictly on the side of the user. I’m pretty sure that by now, anybody *not* using Chrome is doing so because they don’t *want* google in their browsing.

The only way I’ve found that works to keep the google translation bar off is by going to my browser’s settings and changing my preferred display language to “english”. This is seriously pissing me off, because I should NOT have to do this.

If this continue I’ll also come running to AO3; they’re a bit stuffy, their tagging system is out of control, their font types aren’t as nice and there’s way less fics on there (and they allow RPF of all things), but at least they aren’t forcing google on us.

I’m not having this problem. You should let the site admins know what browser and system your using otherwise they won’t be able to correct the problem or figure out if they actually have to remove it.

Considering the fact fictionpress has the genre “school” it would be wonderful.

cathy massey

10/20/2013 at 12:52 am

I’ve seen the genre ‘kidfic’ to describe an AU that examines some or all of the canon characters as grade or high schoolers.

I’d think that putting in an AU genre and urging authors to describe it as well as possible in their summaries would work as well.

cmcwiki

10/20/2013 at 1:07 am

the problem is cathy that i AM seeing it. Like 10-15 fics on every other page are Highschool AU.

There is no need to make a genre for AU, as it will confuse people as to what it entails.

cathy massey

10/20/2013 at 1:25 am

I hadn’t realizes that they were so prevalent in some other fandoms.

There’s only 1-3 per page here in the two fandoms I follow most closely, but on the 2 biggest sites for one of those, kidfics make up a sizable percentage – and AU stories of every sort far outnumber the canon ‘verse.

In some other fandoms here, I haven’t seen them at all.

Birdymain

10/20/2013 at 2:40 am

Well isn’t fanfiction all au?

Lol. Ya, Au should be separate from school fics.

yemi hikari

10/20/2013 at 4:03 am

It’s one of the popular choices for all human AUs for stories where some of the characters aren’t human. It’s hard to actually find good ones, but honestly if there was a genre for these fics it would be easier to critique them and standard might grow. Might is the operative word here.

fems

10/20/2013 at 6:04 am

The problem with ‘kid!fic’ is that it’s also used for stories where the (adult) characters revert to children due to some technical, magical and/or alien influence and most of those situations are temporary, meaning the characters are often toddlers, young children or teens for a few days/weeks tops and thus won’t go to school.

Also, some people could interpret ‘kid!fic’ as a fic where canonical characters have children, often unlike as in the original material, and that the story focuses on them with their children.

The high school/college AUs I’ve seen in my preferred fandom are simply school!verse stories and fortunately aren’t too prevalent. However, regardless of how many of these stories there are in certain fandoms I don’t think turning it into a genre is the way to go. There are already some genres that aren’t actually genres in the literal sense of the word and ‘categories’ would be better suited to those and things like whump, school!verse and fluff.

For the fandoms that have ‘Worlds’ it might indeed be an idea to place the school!verse and other prevalent alternate universes under them, but I’m not familiar enough with the ‘World’ feature to know whether that’s how it works.

cathy massey

10/20/2013 at 12:07 pm

I’ve seen five or six fics that involve adult characters getting younger (usually magically) in my fandom, and almost all of them were called ‘de-aging’. Only one used the term kidfic, and when I saw it, I thought it was wrongly used.

I ‘knew’ the proper term was de-aging. I ‘knew’ kidfics’ are about the characters in their early years. After all, that’s how our big archive site, the LJ fic finder’s board, and several summaries on this site all use it. It hadn’t occurred to me that other fandoms had this genre, or that the word might have a different application.

From what I’ve been seeing in the past 2 months of postings, the fan fiction terminology is still somewhat mutable, and some terms seem to be defined a little differently in different fandoms. Some linguist should watch for a while. He may be able to get a paper out of it.

(It may be in for some unexpected twists and turns in its evolution if someone doesn’t rein in this spellchecker.)

yemi hikari

10/20/2013 at 2:55 pm

There are already some genres that aren’t actually genres in the literal sense of the word and ‘categories’ would be better suited to those and things like whump, school!verse and fluff.

I am going to quote Merriam-Webster here. Genre is “a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.” Thus you’re argument that genre would be better of labeled as categories is invalid because genre is by its very meaning a category, but by defining it as genre means it is specifically categorizing in this sense creative works.

Some people might argue that you can’t add new genre but fact is you can. One of the signs that Literature is adapting and growing is the fact new genre appear to help classify the works out there. Angst and Hurt/Comfort are genre that appeared because of a need in the fanfic community. Family and Friendship are used now to classify many things on many sites in film media whether it be live action or animation.

The above genre I’ve seen many stories for in various fandoms that would be better off categorized with these genre then the genre we have. While they may not all be used in the literary field they are used for comics/manga or live film/animation to help categorize stories.

Emily

10/20/2013 at 10:37 am

will we ever have copy and paste since i don’t feel comfortable doing all that technical stuff to my computer. :)

@fems. The World filter works to filter out things according to the fandom’s media versions. For example, my fandom Thunderbirds. The TV show and the 2004 live action movie are considered different worlds. If you want to read stories about only the movie, you’d filter out the TV show. Some of the bigger fandoms, like Avengers don’t use the World filter–the movie, comic, and cartoon are literally in different sections (as Thunderbirds used to be).

Thank you for the explanation! I had only checked them in the HP fandom after seeing the feature mentioned several times but that didn’t really clarify the other uses/suggestions I’d read about in relation to the World filter.

If you’re talking about Thunderbirds, cathy, the problem with two different sections was the TV section had far more visibility. As a result, the movie-verse writers kept putting their stuff there, instead of the woebegone movie section. Personally, I thought the World filter was a good compromise. Those who didn’t want to see the movie-verse stuff could filter it out and those who wanted the visibility of the main section still had it. Now, if we could only find a way to filter out the dreaded “Tracy sister” fics…

The Warty Hogg

10/20/2013 at 12:30 pm

Went and reported dozens of copyright infringement cases yesterday, including an ‘author’ who has had her story deleted twice but keeps coming back. Seriously, I am considering emailing my professional resume to the admins and volunteering to spend at least one hour every day on abuse reports. We are doing this to protect FFN, not ourselves, and its ridiculous how FFN doesn’t seem to care. One good lawsuit, boys, and down you will go, in flames.

You have to understand that ffnet doesn’t need your protection. You can take your self-righteous attitude and go elsewhere. Please don’t throw the word lawsuit about because there are certain legals steps that have to be taken first and that would allow ffnet to delete any problematic stories ahead of time. The site’s been around for over 10 years so they know what they’re doing. A lot more than you do, even if your ego doesn’t like to admit it.

I doubt you have a professional resume because you don’t even sound like an adult. I suggest you take a break from reporting stories and only return to it after the swelling in your head has gone down. Maybe it would be better if you focused on protecting yourself because you are placing an unnecessary strain on yourself.

Obviously you haven’t heard enough news on pirate sites. Piratebay is a big one that was facing criminal charges. ISOhunt was big till they were half shut down and fined. MegaUpload was shut down and the owner fleeing out of the country for criminal charges. Lol. Pirate sites get lawsuits a lot more then shut down. Regardless, as long as FF.net workers are not being paid for their site, with the TOS everyone should have read. FF.net can’t be sued legally.

KageNoNeko

10/21/2013 at 10:28 pm

@Birdymain, the owner of MegaUpload was born in Germany and was living in New Zealand when MegaUpload was slammed by feds, so really he is not fleeing out of the country. If you want the whole story, ArsTechnica has several articles on MegaUpload and the fall out of not following the proper protocal.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 4:19 pm

I wasn’t talking about the US, but you’re right. Lol. Must have been thinking of a different pirate then.

Holly

10/20/2013 at 1:07 pm

A little equity would be nice. Over on FictionPress, I would certainly use a without filter in the ratings selections. ‘All without K-K+’ would be most useful for me. As currently set up, searchers for ‘All without T and M’ are already catered to in the pre-selected options: Search K-K+.

Okay, not sure if I did it wrong, but though I have gone in and updated my Clone Wars fics to reflect pairing, I am not seeing the brackets in the directory when I filter for my fics. However, the Star Wars movie category works correctly. So not sure if the problem is with the Cartoons category or just the Clone Wars archive. Either way, all pages have not updated and this is kind of annoying me. Can other people check to see if they are having similar problems after editing their fics?

*nods* It shows up now. Thanks for the reply. Had thought changes to story properties would update immediately, but maybe that is just the summary section. Think I read a blog post about changes to summaries showing up immediately in the directory.

fems

10/20/2013 at 6:02 pm

That may have been my post, as the pairing changes were almost instant for all the fics I changed. I think there were two where it didn’t happen right away (after hitting ‘save changes’ and using the story’s url under info) but after hitting refresh two seconds later it was changed and I did comment on how pleased I was to see the instantaneous update. However, those were in-story as I was too lazy to look up all my fics in the story overview (all except one are complete and it would take a lot of browsing to find them).

Please please please answer some abuse reports! I don’t mean to annoy you guys but if you actually did something about reports sent over plagiarism I wouldn’t have to resort to this to get your attention.

I’ve sent reports for the plagiarist Lemonny Goodness whose story “Thinking of You”, Published: 09-02-09, is the exact copy of Rinoaunfan’s “In my Thoughts” Published: 02-01-09. It’s really pissed users off in the reviews of the stolen story calling this user out for plagiarism, including the original author, Rinoaunfan, themselves http://www.fanfiction.net/r/5351497/

I’ve been reporting this since February! I’m sorry but a lack of response from you guys like this is just abysmal; it wouldn’t take your competitors A03 this long to answer abuse reports.
Get some more staff! Considering how much money you guys get from advertisers like amazon it really wound’t be that hard.

AO3 is all volunteer but much smaller volume with more volunteers. I feel for you, Don. I have been reporting this and other stories for months with limited results. And when an admin does actually delete the story, it often gets reposted, at least with copyright infringement. And the folks whose stories get deleted for copyright infringement promptly put them back up with an apology because they don’t know why the story was deleted.
Which gets us back to consistent enforcement of the rules.

They do act on some reports, it just take time because there are TOO many since the site is too big (and honestly, every time they act fast and delete many reported stories, then some stories that didn’t break the rules end being deleted thanks to some fake reports. I, for one, prefer when they take their time and innocent users don’t get their stories deleted.)

Take their time is one thing. Ignore obvious copyright infringement and blatant plagiarism for month after month after month when they have been reported repeatedly is something else. I know the reports I file are not about ‘innocent’ users. They are all breaking the rules.

Jordanna

10/20/2013 at 9:18 pm

Hmm… So, does anyone know a way to filter out the Japanese name attached to the English name on many anime categories?

I’ve never written in a fandom that actually had that before, but having just posted my first “Sword Art Online” ficlet… I really do not like having the Japanese text included alongside the fandom’s English title. No disrespect intended to the Japanese language or the fandom’s country of origin; I’m just a bit of a freak for neatness and consistency, so having that jammed in amidst the English that is the rest of my profile is seriously bugging me.

It is uncalled for to be rude to someone because their aesthetic preferences are different from yours.

cmcwiki

10/21/2013 at 12:12 am

I just think its silly to get bent out of shape over a few katakana/other characters being included. Maybe the original characters are included because its english name is only a rough translation.

yemi hikari

10/21/2013 at 1:37 pm

I thought the reason why kanji was included in the titles was because the English variations of the titles aren’t always well known unless the Mangaka designed the original logo in English so they have what everyone would recognize as the title and not just the English speakers?

What exactly is pairing? I really don’t understand. And by the way, the email alerts are no good. can you guys look into it please? I also have a question what is the difference between visitors and views in stat traffic?

Have a simple request: would it be possible to change the FFN forum settings so forum moderators have permission to change thread titles? Currently only forum administrator allowed to do so. This restriction does not make sense as sometimes forum moderators may need to do this as well, especially if these is spam or obscenity in thread title.

Yes please from me too. We have forum rules for thread titles, but it would be so much friendlier if mods could change them to help out a new poster instead of appearing to be completely anal about it…

Here’s another one that has an MA violation (some Guest alerted me to this one, and it has been reported already.) http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5893991/26/May-December-Divide. I guess this author doesn’t believe that their story doesn’t violate the rating rule do to know coarse langue, however their is a lot of explicit in this chapter. ADMINS TAKE IT DOWN!!!

seila

10/22/2013 at 12:19 am

Lillian – You couldn’t pay me to read that, but I did check the reviews for that particular chapter. It doesn’t look like anyone at all has warned this author that she crossed the line, and that MA is prohibited. I see nothing but glowing praises in there, and people who say “I don’t mind a bit of citrus.” All of which is cringe worthy.

But the admins here are indeed willing to warn authors and tell them how to get the story to fit into M parameters. If this author mistakenly believes she’s within her boundaries, as you’ve said yourself, why not contact her?

Lillian

10/22/2013 at 2:13 am

seila: I checked the reviews also after the Guest contacted me. I can’t believe no one has pointed it out to the author that the story went over the M rating, but then again people love their porn and over look the fact that the M rating is SUGGESTIVE theme only.

As to why I cannot contact them, I can but I choose not to. They were already warned by the Guest who told me, and they chose not to listen. They also seem to believe they know best and have chosen to leave it up for the admins to take down. (Read their recent author’s note). So I don’t see a point in aiding someone who doesn’t want to listen.

Which is why I am going to ask for a new idea. Xing, I don’t care how mad people will get, but I think it is time you take some drastic measures. Since people believe they can get away with violating the rules, like the authors we have been reporting for years, I think it’s time you hit them where it hurts. I believe that you should put a temporary ban on the M rating.

Since a massive majority of users use the rating to post their porn, I believe you should place a temporary ban on the rating to not only show the users that the M rating is not to be used that way, but to also show that you are serious about your rules. This may bring a backlash, I don’t doubt that, but with how users act like they know better and post without paying attention to the rules, consequences must be done.

After the ban is over (I say ban it for six months) I also say put Rogue’s idea of monitoring new posts into play so that no more rule breakers will go un-noticed.

Not only will banning the M rating for a bit help show the users that the M rating is not for sex of any kind, but also it will help clean up the site.

I also advice stating that the M rating is not meant for sex, or limes, but making out (frenching) is okay.

Harsh idea, and I am pretty sure most users will want to kill me for suggesting it, but some users just need to know.

birdymain

10/22/2013 at 3:10 am

O.o Ban M rating. Sorry got to say that’s one of the worst ideas I’ve heard on here. The rating system is quite clear enough on what’s M and MA rating. It’s even clearly pointed out for new authors before they can post a story. Punishing the many for the few that breaks the rules is extremely stupid. It’s just like the highlighting being turned off. A few people abused it and now the rest that actually use it is punished when it does nothing to stop plagiarism.

All that banning M rating is going to do is mix M and MA rated fics into T ratings

birdymain

10/22/2013 at 3:21 am

So banning the M rating temporarily has got to be one of the worst ideas I’ve seen here. You want to punish a few people when the majority follow the rules. All that will accomplish is M and MA rated fics being posted under T ratings.

The rating system is quite clear on what’s M and MA ratings. New authors see it before they can post a story.

You want people to understand that MA isn’t allowed on FF.net is for the admins to actually process reports. Because they’re not, that’s why you’re not seeing it being taken down.

Lillian

10/22/2013 at 1:05 pm

If any of you bothered to do your research on the Fanfiction rating system you’d know that the system is based on the MPAA movie ratings G through NC-17. On FFN the rating are as followed:

K. For Kids. Suitable for all ages. (Equivalent to the G-Rating or U in Britain.)
K+ For Older Kids. Suitable for children 9 and older. (Equivalent to PG-Rating)
T For TEEN. Suitable for children 13 and older. (Equivalent to PG-13-Rating or a 12A in Britain.)
M for Mature. Suitable for children 16 or older. (Equivalent to R-rating or a 15 in Britain.)
MA for Mature Adults. Limited to adults 18 or older. (Equivalent to an NC-17-Rating or 18 in Britain.)

R-rating, as you know, does not contain full on sex. If anything it contains making out with shirts coming off before it cuts off to another scene, then goes back after the couple is done. As Rogue mentioned before, the best examples of the sexual situations allowed in an R rating is to look at old horror movies such as Scream.

When the horror film Scream was submitted, it received an NC-17 rating for its graphic violence. However, Miramax Films, which funded the film, refused to release a film with this rating, so director Wes Craven fought long and hard, making many cuts to attempt to get an R rating. In the end, it took a second showing, with the members having an open mind toward the humorous subject matter, to get the wanted rating. Ironically, when the film was released to video, the version shown was the original, uncut version, though that was fixed in subsequent releases.

Horror movies are a prime example of how much of the sexual content is allowed, they do have to cut out a lot of it. (Very few details go into it, or the person is focusing on something else entirely like in American Psycho which was originally an NC-17 rating, and is still listed as such.)

If you want a more modern take on an R rated movie, the Fifty Shades of Gray movie (Gods I can’t believe they are making a movie of that..) is stated to be left at the R rating and will not push the NC-17 rating as the book did. Meaning they are cutting out parts.

If you want a novel take on what is allowed as M: “Implied sex or short scenes without much description.” This would be rated as YA, and under the Juvenile section in the Library. If you want MA check the adult section in the Library.

However, I still think it is a good idea for Xing to temporarily ban the M rating for a bit just until they get the site cleaned up and for the users to learn that they are dead serious about their rules.

“open mind toward the humorous subject matter”
Did you just call Scream a comedy!! D: Scream is a thriller, your views are really warped if you think the material was meant to be “humorous”.

And lets bring up the consequences of banning M rating again since you ignored it.

“All that will accomplish is M and MA rated fics being posted under T ratings.”

I’m quite aware of what the difference between M and MA rating is. Your welcome to take a look at my profile since you feel right to judge others. ~birdymain I was here when they changed the ratings from G-R to K-M. I’ve reported more than a few MA rated stories on FF.net. So I’ll repeat the consequences of temporarily banning M rating. “All that will accomplish is M and MA rated fics being posted under T ratings.”

The site reports have to actually be processed for stopping MA ratings on FF.net not this weird Gung ho approach.

Lillian

10/22/2013 at 2:50 pm

Your an idiot if you didn’t know Scream was meant to be a comedy. If you ever bothered to watch the biography on the making of the movie, Wes Carven talks about the original script (Titled SCARY MOVIE) and their struggle to get the rating to R. The members did, finally, focus on the humorous parts of the movie in order for it to get it’s R rating. Scream is even listed as one of many COMEDY Horror films, along with Tremors, Evil Dead, and Return of the Living Dead.

Really, learn your horror movie history. This only proves that you really don’t know the rating as you think you do. Lol.

As pointed out to you, the T rating is the equivalent of a PG-13 film. I think it would be fairly obvious for anyone to know that anything above making out would be in violation of this rating. This would make things easier to weed out the rule breakers. And if that is a problem you are so worried about, Xing could temporarily block access to the site while he and the fellow admins do a site wide clean up of all rule breakers. It may take a few days, but it would work.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 2:59 pm

:/ You really must be a troll. You seem to be incapable of having one civil conversation. Your reaction is to automatically attack someone just because their views are different. Troll behavior is not only annoying but will just get people ignoring you. So if you can’t say anything civil without attacking. Don’t bother commenting please.

I also looked up Scream supposedly being a comedy. I found nothing to support your findings. Intent of a movie being funny and being a thriller instead does not make it a comedy it makes it a thriller.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 3:04 pm

I’m sorry, I forgot to post. I’ll be ignoring any future posts towards me from you. I don’t do conversations with trolls.

Just Because

10/22/2013 at 4:54 pm

Meh. I’m all for shutting the site down for a few days to start weeding out not only MAs, but songfics, troll fics, copyright infringements, and plagiarizers. Sure, it’ll suck to have the site shut for a few days, but grow up, move on, find something else to do like read a book or ride a bike or something or other. If it’ll help get the admins ahead of the game, then why not.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 4:59 pm

It would be nice to see them process the reports. I suppose if shutting the site down would help them, I’m all for it. I have my doubts about it working that way, but it would be reall ynice to see reports processed and the site cleaned up.

cmcwiki

10/22/2013 at 5:06 pm

when you say “Shut Down” Do you mean Error 404 shutdown or nothing else can be uploaded shutdown

yemi hikari

10/22/2013 at 5:06 pm

*groan*

While I know you’re not a troll Lillian I know that you don’t know what you’re talking about despite the fact you think you do.

“As Rogue mentioned before, the best examples of the sexual situations allowed in an R rating is to look at old horror movies such as Scream. ”

Worst example ever. First of all the research I’ve done indicates that the cuts made to Scream did not involve sexual situations but violence. Second, a lot of the cuts made had to do with how long things were shown as well as what amounts to a non-standard now about how blood is seen on screen. And then there is your comment about how Scream is a comedy. I think you’re referring to this bit on wikipedia.

“Weinstein explained that although he agreed with their assessment that the film was “intense”, the film also had comedic elements and satire; it was not just a horror film glorifying violence.”

That does not make the work a comedy nor does it mean that Scream was meant to be a comedy. The comedic elements simply helped. Yes, it is of the comedy horror genre. Only some of these movies also get listed under the comedy genre. Why? Comedy horror is a genre of its own that has a wide range of humor much of which can go over the normal comedy genre’s head. It has its own distinct humor.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 5:12 pm

@cmcwiki

If I understand you correctly, I think it would be the error 404 shut down. Though not being able to upload anything would be a nice alternative as well.

yemi hikari

10/22/2013 at 5:23 pm

I missed your guys comments. That would actually be an interesting way to get rid a bunch of the rule breaking stuff. Say that there is a server glitch and that they’re working on it. However, wouldn’t people figure out they were lying to them at the end of it and be really pissed at the site admins for lying to them? Unless of course they said “it will be down for routine maintenance”… but that shouldn’t last two days.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 5:30 pm

I think it would depend on how back up they are. This is just on reports. That cyber bully I showed in a previous blog is an example. Just how many people have reported them in the three years they’ve had an account. That’s a lot even if only for a month.

Just Because

10/22/2013 at 6:07 pm

How they want to shut it down to them is really up to them. I figured just locking the entire site down with a message saying something like “Due to an outnumber of reports, our staff will be taking from XX to XX to sort out the issues and address the offending stories and/or members. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. If we are forced to take longer, we will issue out an email stating the change” or something official like that. *Shrugs* It will suck for anybody who’s fixing their story or what not, but I personally think (opinion, so feel free to say it’s not a good one, I don’t care) it’s one of the options to do unless they hire and/or get volunteers to start doing clean up as soon as possible so they can catch up and stay on top. To me, a rule is only a rule if it’s enforced :\

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 6:54 pm

Well said.

Roomie

10/21/2013 at 5:53 pm

If they want to say “come get me” on their profile then that’s their own business. It’s a taunt, but they’re not using hate speech. Their stories may be reportable but what they wrote at the bottom of their profile is only immature and nothing more.

If you stop feeding the trolls, they’ll eventually disappear. In the True Blood section, we just don’t review them. The trolls go away and then we can get the story deleted without a big show.

This person wants your negative attention. They want you to leave reviews and to post about them here. They’re begging for it and you’re giving them exactly what they want! That’s why they won’t go away! You’ve been reporting stories as a hobby for how long now and you still haven’t realized that???

(Comment based on user’s following post, which for some reason has no Reply button).

Lillian, I think you’re a bit confused.

Characters are allowed to have sex in an M rated story. They’re allowed to have sex in a T rated story. What you can’t do is describe sexually explicit things in any detail. But that scene? Certainly not MA, (though the scene you’re complaining about is, IMO, solidly M).

For goodness sake, there is no requirement that M stories only have characters “making out”!

And I had to laugh at “But the admins here are indeed willing to warn authors and tell them how to get the story to fit into M parameters.” The admins have been ignoring my requests for a bit more clarity as to where the lines between ratings fall for over half a decade.

“the M rating is not for sex of any kind”

No, that would be the K+ rating. Characters can have sex – without explicit descriptions – in any story where “adult themes” are permitted. You need to learn the difference between writing which implies things – sometimes strongly, which is where writing becomes M – and writing in which things are explicit, which is where it becomes MA.

Btw, I’d love to know how a guest sent you a message. Can’t messages only be sent by logged-in site members?

Check my above post for what is allowed in M rated stories, you obviously didn’t do much research on the rating system itself.

No, a Guest determined enough can find other ways to send message members such as leaving an anonymous review on their story, or tracking them down to another site like BlogSpot or tumblr. Really, a Guest doesn’t need to be a logged in site member to be able to contact one with all the different ways to do it.

guest

10/22/2013 at 1:26 pm

You are an idiot for even suggesting something like that ban. I have written an m rated fix that has no explicit content and if this happens I will have it removed. I am not going to let some stupid self righteous FOOL like you make me pay for someone else’s mistakes. Xing please ignore this person they obviously have no idea what they are talking about

Ah, the return of little troll. It’s completely up to Xing, and considering that he wasn’t too shy at removing the MA rating, or the chat/script format, second person/you based stories, celebrity stories, and etc. He may just do it. Considering that a very large portion of the M rated stories here have so much graphic sex. And, it’s not like I suggested the rating be banned forever, just long enough for the users to understand that it is not a rating for graphic sex.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 2:11 pm

Seriously, why are you so hostile? People disagree with you on banning M rating and give legit reasons and you attack. Why bothering placing a comment then?

Lillian

10/22/2013 at 2:53 pm

Really, I’m the one hostile. If I recall correctly you are the one most hostile. When you get annoyed you are the first to throw an insult at anyone, as you are doing now, and you are also the first one to accuse of someone attacking when they have not done so. Really, who shouldn’t be posting comments?

yemi hikari

10/22/2013 at 5:21 pm

I’m not going to argue that the story you pointed out to the site admins doesn’t contain MA content. It does.

I’ve read both your comments and Birdymain’s and the person being hostile is yourself. While it is true that Birdymain called you a troll fact is a.) you called him an idiot before that and that is why they called you a troll b.) you’ve been spouting off nonsense you believe to be true and have managed to show a major lack of understanding when it comes to the topic you’re trying to discuss.

I mean, come on. You claimed that Scream was evidence of where they had to tone down for sexual situations when it was violent situation they had to tone down for not to mention the fact you would have known that the footage cut was only a few extra seconds of showing certain scenes. You then tried arguing that Scream was a comedy because it was of the comedy horror genre without understanding what the comedy horror genre is.

Lillian

10/22/2013 at 6:15 pm

Yemi, you seem to forget that birdymain spouted off an equal amount of rude comments towards myself as I have him. He was the one to call me stupid first (Calling an idea the stupidest thing they have ever heard is no very civil in my opinion.). I will also point out that this is the internet, again, and that words can be interpreted wrongly.

As in regards towards Scream, I did not say anything about it’s sexual situation but of its struggle to get to the R-rating. Violence is another form of MA content and it can also be shown as an example. And as for Scream being a comedy, it is listed as such here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comedy-horror_films#1990s

Not only that, but Scream’s genre of movie is left to opinion of the viewer. I and many believe it to be a comedy horror film as many believe it to be thriller. Believe it or not I do know what I am talking about.

Faiiry

10/22/2013 at 6:58 pm

I’m going to chime in to just say. Wikipedia is the number one worst reference to put down simply because anyone can edit anything at anytime on the page. So that means a lot of false information is put down.

To make your argument sound you should reference something else that’s not on a site anyone can edit.

@ Lillian i like comedy, and i like horror…and i Iike both mixed into one….but i think scream is too dark for me in that regard and i don’t actually consider it funny, nore enjoyable…but that’s just me…. loose terms being what they are…for example, beetle juice, that’s a horror and a comedy as well and i love that one…

…in any case, yeah, the fiction you posted has adult content,… I would say teetering on the brink of MA…it’s not just M in my eyes…though my cousin is saying otherwise claiming it’s tastefully done, and hence M in rating in his eyes….the fact is with so much praise, it only encourages that type of written work…bringing up what i said before about even readers encouraging the smutt to be posted…so i don’t think it would really help to ban the M rating at all…

@ everyone …that was fairly mild, really… There are some fictions involving tentacle rape and other….well…wrong things…I’ve seen some that make me want to melt my eyes in some of the anime fandoms….and if the one in fandom for the cartoon Doug is still up…the one with Doug and Mr. Dink doing less than savory activities…yeah…not getting into that one…

In any case…

We’d have more luck reintroducing MA than taking M away….but, that’s just because as the saying goes “Sex sells” Sexual things are in our daily lives, from the TV commercials, and games, to other things… our world is filled with these icons…and sadly, what do fans do? They gravitate towards it in droves…same goes for violence and gore…so i really think doing away with M won’t help. in fact i think it will hinder xing…and FFN as a fan base to do that.

We might have a chance if he did a site purge of all reported content, provided he did it carefully….but i know not everyone reports out of the goodness of their heart…and I’d hate to see good fiction taken down all because someone reported something out of being mean, or worse…I’m sure there are cases like that in the reports too, that Xing will have to sift out.

Also as a side note i forgot to post as well… here in America, R rating gets pretty colorful… I mean, I’ve seen full on sex scenes in R movies… is it like, playboy style? No…but you can still watch a movie that has sex in it…fairly graphic sex really, if a few movies I recall allowed it…

So, if it’s based on the MPAA, then yes, there can be sex in M rated fictions…

yemi hikari

10/22/2013 at 9:21 pm

The closest thing I saw to them being rude to you was them calling you a troll which was right after you called them an idiot and thus said comment was justified as well as saying your comments were weird. They weren’t rude to you at all.

Also… if you had bothered to read what I wrote about comedy horror you would have seen my comment about how comedy horror does not equate the comedy genre as the comedy that occurs in comedy horror is the not the same kind of humor that occurs in the comedy genre and for the most part will go over people’s heads unless they are familiar with the horror genre and comedy horror in general. Even then Scream contains really dark humor for the comedy genre.

yemi hikari

10/22/2013 at 9:23 pm

I meant “comedy horror genre” on the last part not “comedy genre” because it is NOT of the comedy genre.

Correct me if I’m wrong… but wasn’t scream meant to be more of a parody of the other horror movies out there? Sorry a lot of horror things trigger me and upset me, so I tend to avoid them…but I thought that scream was meant to be a parody of the other shows released around it’s time…or popular ones that were hits at the box office…

yemi hikari

10/23/2013 at 2:56 am

Yes. It’s more of a parody and satirical piece then comedic piece. This still gets it places under the comedy horror genre as… well, comedy horror as a genre doesn’t work the same way that the comedy genre works. That’s the best way to put it.

I agree with the people who have mentioned the character/pairing filter not showing up on the manage stories and author profile pages, and also find this very irritating. The way I understood things when the four-character filter was brought up, it was to be filtered A-D with the most important character as A, and then the least as D. Granted, they’re all involved in the storyline (if the filter is used correctly, and not just filled in willy-nilly for the fun of it), but some characters (like A and B, for instance) are going to be more important.

My issue is this: I am currently writing a story (with branching storylines that all interconnect into one big one at the end) where two characters in particular – the main two (A & B) – are in a relationship. Okay, so I use the pairing filter (pairing A) to fix that. The problem is when I try to put in C & D – also important characters in the story, both also in pairings, but NOT with each other – they keep popping up between A & B. When I save it and look on my author profile (and I’ve had a lot of reviewers tell me they’ve discovered my stories by going to my profile after reading something of mine they like), not only are the two characters who show up NOT the main two in the story (paired or otherwise), the two characters who are put side by side on my author’s profile are siblings, which reflects very badly on me, because since a lot of readers probably are not aware of the new pairing filter update, they might think I am writing incest, which I absolutely do NOT condone and would never do. I’ve tried to circumvent that by listing the pairings involved in the fic in with the story summary, as visible on my author profile, but I still find this problem very irritating and potentially damaging.

I’ve reworked the filter on the story so it only shows characters A & B (with the pairing filter enabled), but even at that, character B is still listed first, so even at that it’s not working right. And what about characters C & D, who are also important to the story and I can’t even acknowledge for fear of misrepresentation under the filter, due to weird rearrangement?

I beg you, PLEASE rework the filter so it doesn’t automatically rearrange the characters when the “save” button is hit. Especially since there isn’t any rhyme or reason (i.e. alphabetical) to the rearrangement. The filter seems to be arranged so people can find fics based on the characters they want (and by that I mean, they’re searching for the character they want the most of in the fic, meaning character A, therefore the most important in the fic), so if it’s all rearranged – what good does it do the authors or the readers?

The main problem comes from the fact the manage stories and author profiles still haven’t been updated to show that the stories have four characters. However, because they aren’t updated to the four character system they shouldn’t show Character C and Character D in the pairing brackets thus they are not being negatively effected by the brackets. Of course stories marked as romance where characters C and D show up first are going to be misleading, but it was this way even before the pairing feature was added.

P.S. Is it really that big of a deal whether or not Character A or Character B is listed first in a pairing? If the characters get reordered in the pairings then the characters in the pairing are always going to show up uniform for all stories.

Hmm. . . I think it would benefit you to take a look at one of Xing’s blog posts from when the pairing system was still a hatching idea and the four character business was brand new. This one: http://blog.fictionpress.com/2013/08/22/characters-and-pairing/ answered a lot of questions for me, personally, since Xing explains a bit of his thought process.

I’m not saying you’re wrong or that your opinion doesn’t count; I debated and cooked up a couple ideas of my own too at the time, although for a different reason. Seeing this afterwards, though, gave me a bit more respect for the way things are.

You guys seriously need to get a better handle on the profanity filter. I have it turned OFF, and in the past few days, here are some of the many words I’ve had censored:

“Bush” as in shrub, “jerk” as in mean person, and “naked” as in naked truth. Seriously, why do you even bother having the option to turn the profanity filter off if it’s going to do things like that? And I’m perfectly fine if somebody says “sucks” or any actual profanity because I’m a big girl, and I think eighty-five percent of the users on this site share similar sentiments.

Please note the word “pairing” can be misleading as it represents the strong association, which does not have to be romantic, between two or more characters as designated by the writer. For simplicity reasons we will continue to use this term until a better term can be found.

How is that useful, then? If [A,B] can denote any random relationship between A and B, how is it different from just A,B? I’d like anyone to point out to me how two main characters in a story have not SOME kind of relationship — as friends, as foes, as siblings, whatever.

I don’t see how that quote didn’t make the entire thing useless. That aside, now what do I do for a story where the main characters and the pairing are one and same thing? By rights, I’d have to add them twice — once with brackets, another time without, though what I’ll probably end up doing is just leaving everything as is (without brackets). Especially with the above caveat.

Anyway, this was exactly why I was sceptical — it worked fine before. Every fix now is an attempt to repair what broke with the original “fix” to begin with. And so far, it’s not really working either.

I think they meant the word “pairing” has been used to denote any relationship with strong relationship but that the “pairing” filter is supposed to only denote the romance ones. As others have pointed out though, those who use pairing to denote any relationship are rare and there is no need to denote such relationships with the pairing filter.

Oh, so I had it the wrong way round — they didn’t mean to say the new filter should be used that way, they apologised that it could be seen that way? o.O

In that case, I have to say that post made me more confused than I was before reading it. Thanks for clarifying, and I agree that ‘pairing’ implies ‘romantic couple’ unless otherwise stated. The above explanation didn’t enter my mind at all.

No. This is a fanfiction site. There are plenty of websites available to post scripts. If someone truly wants helpful feedback for a script they’ve written, then they should go where other script writers are present.

a pending reading button would be nice (xing…fix the copy paste) as well as a way for us to mark/save the chapter we were on… (xing, fix the copy pate so i can read said chapters…) and in light of the above debacle that i can’t seem to reply to, Xing please release a clear cut statement about what is considered M among admins…

It seems M is not as clear as some seem to think, since we all have different views, and I’d like to know what the admins consider M.

I wonder though if it was an issue of differing views or said person not knowing what they were talking about but thinking they do. I think you’re always going to get people like that even if the site admins were to clarify things.

Birdymain

10/22/2013 at 5:36 pm

Lol. I was checking out the new pairing feature. Because I’ve never added a story before I got sent straight to a TOS and a definition of what’s M and MA rating was. It is quite clear. Though I suppose they could post it somewhere more obvious or even every new story listed show the rating system again.

And

Just Because
10/21/2013 at 5:21 pm
I see they have challenged us; I accept this challenge.

^
That’s the post to hit reply on. XD They need a reply button on every post make it a lot easier.

I think rating needs to depends on the suggested audience for the series… for example… if it’s PG13… then that’s the highest rating allowed in the series…only reason I suggest this, is because many of these series were intended for children…and when my cousin (who is 13…but special needs, and has no idea of social appropriateness) comes to me with a fan fiction from something in a Disney fandom, the last thing I want to see is that Disney character no longer being…well…Disney…to put the term appropriately.

If they’re going to crack down on MA rating, it might be useful to take the time to make the content age appropriate in every specific fandom…

yemi hikari

10/23/2013 at 2:53 am

Just like it is possible to write a K fic for a fandom that is MA originally it is possible to write a T rated story for a K rated fandom. There are also times that a writer will work with more sensitive subject matter because they know some of the kids for the fandom have grown up a bit and are dealing with more sensitive manner but still love the old kiddie shows. Actually… the Redwall series when Jaques realized that his target audience was beginning to mature actually matured the content of the books a bit.

Mind you, I get the point you’re making but even I have some stuff in K to T fandoms that is above the original rating that would have to be removed.

I actually got what you were saying about your cousin bringing you some of that stuff in an innocent manner. Some people say that the K to T stuff is so subjective as peoples opinions vary but in truth I think people are quite sensible and understand full well what may be appropriate for their kids isn’t necessarily appropriate for others their age or in the case of special needs kids the reverse is true.

I was talking to my sister about this who nocopy problem and the problems with flagfic. She pointed out something to me that just shows how stupid this hole problem is and how this block is doing nothing. We all have been debating this problem and sharing programs that go around the CSS. While we have been doing that, we forgot a very basic way to save a chapter of a story to our computer, Print to document. It’s that simple and most if not all people have a program that will print to PDF and text format and it is very easy to get one that prints to RTF. Then all we have to do is if want it as one fill in PDF and text is go in to adobe and tell it to combine files and if want you can reformat it. With RTF just use word processing software can read it, combine it, and yon can make any changes that they want to it. If a person wants it as and ebook there are programs that convert to ebook all this does is take up a little more time. All flagfic does is takes all the chapter files format them and makes it into one file and for ebooks it converts it for you. This is not stopping a thief at all nor is it really slowing them down. If they’re going to post the story as their own the fact that it has to be done chapter by chapter does nothing as they have to upload chapter by chapter and if they need it as one story it takes a few extra minutes. This is doing nothing. People have argued that authors expect you to read through the site but everyone knows how to print. The only difference is that it is to a file not paper. This nocopy is clearly not doing anything but annoying people as everyone can print, combine, and format. It is not hard and built into most computers or is an easy download. This is not helping anyone just making it take longer for the honest people, that wanting to use reading program, with limited internet, or travel and use ebooks. This needs to be turned off or just make it of but default as this is not helping anyone just annoying them.

Very well worded. I personally don’t care about the highlighting anymore beyond the fact that highlighting should be enabled by default. They’ve gone through enough effort to change the script that enables and disables nocopy, they’re not going to remove it.